Illustrations by Alison Berry
Guest art by Timothy Weaver (Timo)
Episode 2: Kappa Attack!
Hana sat beside James and Henri on a large grassy hill, their favourite of the spots overlooking the river that cut through the middle of the city. The river, coloured by the sky, was purple and blue and pink, a nostalgic combination that made Hana wish for many more evenings like this one.
School had ended many hours ago and they had met up to think of things to do: they thought of karaoke but Hana said her voice had gotten sore from singing the other night; they thought of playing catch but Henri declined without stating why, more than likely because he was still nursing two very different types of wounds; and they thought of biking out to the large hill overlooking the river that cut through the middle of the city, grabbing pops along the way, so they could watch the sunset, and to this nobody objected. Hana had ridden with James while Henri rode beside them, and altogether the ride to the hill had lasted nearly half an hour, counting all of the breaks James had to take in order to catch his breath.
‘I think you’re getting fatter,’ James had said to Hana, who was holding on tight behind him.
‘I’m not fat!’ she had called out. Then she had looked at Henri and puffed out her cheeks, which had nearly caused him to crash into a pole.
James was utterly exhausted by the time they reached the hill, and Henri welcomed the ability to rest as well, but since Hana did not exert any of her energy she was still full of it. James and Henri watched on as she made many unsuccessful attempts at cartwheels, but soon James had to look away since simply watching her was beginning to exhaust him even more, while Henri cracked open his can of pop and sipped it as he looked out over the city. Hana did not seem to mind the lack of attention as she continued tumbling around behind them.
When she became bored, she ran down to the river and tried to skip stones across it, but all of them plopped down to the bottom without even the merest hint of wanting to skip; Hana, shaking her fist at the river, blamed the rocks for not being smooth and round enough. James and Henri looked at each other before following Hana down and showing her how to skip properly, but their simple instructions proved to be too complex for Hana, as all of her throws continued to send stones directly to the bottom of the river.
‘Something is definitely wrong with these stones,’ Hana said.
‘How about this one?’ James asked, picking up a random stone and holding it up for her approval. But before she could answer he had already sent it skipping across the river. ‘Was there anything wrong with that one?’
‘That was a fluke!’ Hana exclaimed. Then she heard a quick succession of splashes that could only be the sound of another stone being skipped, and turned to see Henri’s stone nearly reaching the other side of the river.
Henri then practiced the throwing motion in front of her. ‘It’s really as easy as it looks,’ he said.
‘It’s easy for you since you play baseball!’ she cried.
‘So do you,’ Henri reminded her.
‘Well, sort of,’ James added. ‘In a way.’
‘I’ll show you!’ She grabbed another stone and whipped it at the river, but instead of skipping triumphantly it bounced off a passing tree branch and struck her knee. James bit his lower lip as badly-suppressed laughter snuck through the corners of his mouth and Henri merely looked at her in surprise, expecting some big emotional outburst. Instead she simply looked out over the river as a calm breeze toyed with the stray strands of her hair.
‘We’re not gonna throw stones anymore,’ she said to herself, barely audible.
‘Pardon?’ Henri asked.
‘Not gonna throw stones anymore,’ she repeated, and then she silently climbed back up the hill where she sat and opened her can of pop.
James laughed heartedly as he and Henri joined her. They talked about their classes while waiting for the sun to set, and Hana enjoyed herself so much that dandruff was the furthest thing from her mind. When the sky became purples and blues and pinks she felt that everything had become perfect. That was when the nearest section of the river began bubbling.
All three of them stood up simultaneously when a sulfurous stench wafted to their nostrils. The bubbles began forming with even greater frequency and they watched on in horror as a small, green, tonsured head with yellow eyes and the beak of a turtle rose to the surface of the water. As the creature’s head drifted towards the river’s edge the rest of its body was revealed: the thing had a green, monkey-like body that appeared to be coated in something akin to seaweed, or perhaps it was just its fur. Hana and James and Henri continued to gaze on in horror as the creature awkwardly but quickly dragged this body onto the grass and started towards them, trailing behind it a short, flat tail that swished excitedly as it moved.
‘I think we should get out of here,’ Henri breathed.
Hana whimpered in agreement.
‘Hold on; I have an idea,’ James said, and ran back to his bike. Hana and Henri had no difficulty with holding on as they were frozen to their spots.
James then came rushing back, yelling nonsensically and wildly waving around his baseball bat; the creature managed to avoid every swing and lunged for Hana, flying through the air and fitting its beak around her head. For some reason, however, it did not bite down. James whacked it with his bat but the creature’s limp body merely swung back and forth like a pendulum in response. Once Hana got over the shock of having been attacked by a monster she looked around her, turning to James and then to Henri, the creature’s body flopping flaccidly against her head.
‘It’s like a hat,’ James said, poking the green body with his bat.
‘Don’t just poke at it, get it off me!’
Henri and James managed to pull the creature off Hana’s head, turning their faces away as they did so in an ineffective attempt to avoid the smell. They let the creature drop lifelessly to the ground.
‘Dan . . . Druff . . .’ the creature croaked, and then it turned onto its stomach and began crawling its way back to the river.
‘Oh no you don’t!’ James called after it, and repeatedly beat the creature with his bat until it had stubbornly completed its course, disappearing into the same section of the river it had manifested from.
‘Are you all right?’ Henri asked Hana.
‘I think so,’ Hana said, rubbing her head and sending dandruff into the air. ‘I hope so.’
‘I thought I heard it say “dandruff”,’ Henri said as he wiped some of the flakes off his shirt, ‘so maybe it’s allergic to it. You may have just saved our lives, Hana.’
‘Hey, I helped too,’ James said as he rejoined them. ‘But I guess Hana’s dandruff did end up being good for something. Eh, Hana?’
‘I think I need a shower,’ she said.
‘I agree,’ Henri said.
‘What, so that’s it?’ James asked, dumbfounded. ‘We see a monster and we just go home?’
‘It’s what they do in tv shows and movies,’ Hana offered.
‘I doubt the police would take anything we tell them seriously,’ Henri said.
James looked back at the spot where the creature had come from. ‘You’re probably right,’ he said. ‘So, who gets to take Stinky home?’ Hana, despite some obvious embarrassment, was not about to argue with being called Stinky at that moment.
Henri and James flipped a coin to see who would give Hana a ride and James lost; he held his shirt up with his nose as he rode the foul-smelling Hana to her house.
At the front door she waved goodbye to him and, once he was gone, opened it, soared up the stairs and threw herself fully-clothed into the shower. It took about half an hour for the smell to die away, or maybe she was merely growing accustomed to it – she was not entirely sure. She prayed it was not the latter.
Her fears were soon put to rest, however, when she got around to joining her family for popcorn and a movie and nobody brought up anything about a smell, something her family would most certainly have done; they had a habit of sometimes being a bit too honest with each other.
Hana sat on the floor so she could be as close to the giant bowl of popcorn as possible, taking small handfuls into her mouth to make up for her lack of dinner. Four glasses of watermelon juice were set around the table for everybody and she managed to finish off her mother’s and sister’s without them noticing; nobody in her family really enjoyed watermelon juice except for her but they kept buying it anyway.
The movie they ended up watching had some of the most technologically advanced computer-animated monsters Hana had seen, and yet they still looked remarkably fake compared to the river monster; in her head she toyed with the concept of capturing it and donating it to the people who made movies so they could study it and make even more realistic monsters. She could not think of any other real use for it.
Most of the movie consisted of overloud explosions, and her mother and father kept fighting over the volume. By the time the movie ended Hana was ready for bed, so she retreated upstairs to her room; this surprised her family since she usually stayed up considerably late on weekends. Her excuse was that she had gone biking all day and was exhausted, an excuse James would not only have rolled his eyes at if he had heard her but also bopped her on the head with the bottom of his fist. Even though she did not have her own bicycle, she would sometimes borrow Henri’s if he was away on a trip to see his grandparents or if he was out at a game, so her family believed her. She almost believed herself, too, since it was far more normal – wonderfully, deliciously normal – than being attacked by some monster that came out of the river.
She dressed into her pink pyjamas and wrapped herself in her blankets, becoming an oversized shawarma. And apparently she was quite the appetizing shawarma too, since before she even had a chance to close her eyes she could smell the telltale smell of sulfur.
She unwrapped herself and sat up. Peering through the darkness she could make out a small, glistening form right outside her window, particularly strange since her room was on the second floor of the house and not anywhere near any trees. She wondered how the river monster could have followed her home, and most especially she wondered why it would come back for more; if it truly was allergic to dandruff in some way then it was picking on the wrong girl.
While the creature hissed at her – the sound managing to pierce her ears despite being muted by the glass – Hana plucked a dandruff apple from the back of her head and held it behind her as she stepped carefully towards the window. Her eyes were still adjusting to the dark and she did not want to trip over any of her scattered schoolbooks or abandoned clothes, anything that could leave her vulnerable to river monster attack.
When she finally reached the window she looked directly into the creature’s evil little eyes, its yellow sclera surrounding devilishly orange pinpoint pupils; in the darkness it somehow appeared even more grotesque, and being forced to encounter it alone made Hana even more frightened.
Still, Hana hesitated for only a moment before throwing the window open and jamming the apple into its snapping beak, careful not to give away any of her fingers along with it. A high-pitched whistling sound came from the creature’s head like that of a boiling teakettle and its ears blew out, spraying yellow pus out the sides of its head and leaving long loose flaps of torn skin to flop against the sides of its face. The dandruff apple had been crushed into a fine white powder in its beak, and as it trickled out onto the windowsill the creature seemed to be swaying in a drunken stupor.
‘Dan . . . Druff . . .’ it moaned, and then fell down to the lawn, rolled onto its stomach and began heading back in the direction of the river. Hana immediately shut the window and breathed into her clothes until the smell went away.
The weekend thankfully passed without any further incidents involving the creature. Hana and James and Henri all talked about it from time to time but usually they had more important matters to discuss, like baseball and karaoke. Basically it seemed like everything was fine and lazy once again – that is, until they returned to class on Monday morning.
Everyone in class was covering their noses because the thickest, nastiest smell of sulfur was permeating the air. Some accused demons and ghosts while others accused their neighbours; the smell was so dense that it seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. Hana and James and Henri all traded uncertain looks with one another.
The students quieted down when the teacher entered the room, but there was still an abundance of gagging and coughing.
‘Good morning, class,’ the teacher greeted them, holding a tissue to his nose. ‘Today I would like to introduce you to a new transfer student who will be joining us from Japan. Everyone, please welcome Kappa.’
The creature stepped into the room wearing a shrunken, awkward-fitting uniform that appeared to be hastily stitched together from a much larger one, and its stringy hair looked like it had been combed with human teeth; licking its beak with a wormy, neon green tongue, it looked over all of the horrified students before settling its gaze on Hana.
‘Bwaaaa,’ it said. Then it pulled up an empty seat beside Hana and nodded politely to her.
Hana meekly raised her hand and asked if she could move.
‘Are you trying to hurt Kappa’s feelings?’ the teacher asked incredulously. ‘That’s not like you, Miss Hana. I must say I’m disappointed.’
‘But I’ve met it before and I don’t think it likes me,’ protested Hana. ‘Or maybe it likes me too much.’ She shuddered at the thought.
The teacher crossed his arms, lowered his head and glared at her over his glasses.
‘Can’t you see that it’s a monster?’ she cried out.
‘Hana!’
But before the teacher could gather his senses, Hana was already standing over the disgusting creature and shaking her dandruff all over it. The river monster’s skin burst into flames and all of the students ran to the far walls, but nobody even thought to reach for the fire extinguisher; they merely watched on as the creature’s body slowly shriveled up and blackened on the floor. The stench of burning fish mingled with that of sulfur.
‘Dan . . . Druff . . .’ was the river monster’s death rattle, and only when it was obviously dead did somebody put out the fire.
Upon investigation it was learned that Kappa was a mutated sea creature and not actually a foreigner from Japan, so Hana was not held accountable for its death; and since there was no known way for dandruff to start fires, even small ones, she received no punishment from the school for disrupting classes. Despite this, however, Hana was growing increasingly worried that all of these bizarre occurrences – the dandruff and the river monster – were becoming what was normal in her life.
‘Just face it,’ James told her after she had divulged this worry to him. ‘You’re not exactly a normal person.’
To Be Continued In Episode Three: Fresh Fish
Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4
Episode 5
Episode 6
Episode 7
Episode 8
Episode 9
Episode 10
Episode 11
Episode 12
Episode 13
Episode 14
Episode 15
Volume 2
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